As a forensic scientist in the Hamilton County coroner's crime laboratory, Mike Trimpe is always searching for the truth.

        He can find it in a human hair from a baseball cap.

        Or in a flake of paint no bigger than the period at the end of this sentence.

LAB CASES

Lab cases by the numbers       The crime lab in Hamilton County Coroner's Office handled 11,498 cases in 2001. The breakdown by lab department:        Drugs (identification of confiscated drugs): 8,683.        Toxicology (identification of controlled substances plus additional poisons in body fluids): 1,721.        Serology (examination of dried blood, semen and other biological stains): 433.        Trace evidence (comparison and identification of hair, fiber, glass, paint, soil, wood and other substances): 239.        Firearms (comparison of known and unknown bullets; determining firing distances): 214.        Arson (examination of debris from fires): 156.        Documents (forged signatures, altered documents): 52.        Lab director Bill Dean has posted a list of frequently asked questions on the coroner's Web site: www.hamilton-co.org/coroner.

        Once, he found the truth in a slice of bread.

        A burglar had stepped on the bread, leaving a partial shoe print at the crime scene. Police brought the evidence to Mr. Trimpe, along with a shoe from a suspect they had arrested.

        Mr. Trimpe determined that the shoe's sole matched the impression on the bread. He also found that a pea-sized particle of soil in the bread was the same size, and in the corresponding spot, as a piece of soil missing from the suspect's dirty shoe. A comparison of the soil type on the shoe with that on the bread revealed another perfect match.

        All of which helped convict the burglar.

        Mr. Trimpe works in relative obscurity, but his profession's profile has risen greatly thanks to CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. For the past two weeks, Cincinnati has been the No. 1 market nationally for the hit CBS drama (9 p.m. Thursday, Channels 12, 7). Not since the O.J. Simpson trial has forensic science received such recognition, Mr. Trimpe and others say.

        “I get at least two to three inquiries a week from people who are interested in forensic science (as a career),” says Bill Dean, crime lab director at the Hamilton County Coroner's Office and Mr. Trimpe's boss.

        Mr. Dean appreciates that forensic scientists are portrayed in a positive light on CSI, but much of what viewers see isn't realistic, he says. For instance, his staff of about 20 doesn't interrogate suspects, and they rarely visit crime scenes to collect evidence; that's usually left to police.

        “We're not cops in lab coats,” says Mr. Dean, who has been lab director since 1991. “We are in fact scientists. We have scientific skills that we use to attack problems.”

        Various specialties exist within the lab. Drug analysts identify confiscated street drugs. Serologists examine dried blood, semen and do DNA testing. Toxicologists identify poisons in body fluids. Document examiners deal with forged signatures. Firearms examiners analyze bullets and firing distances.

        Mr. Trimpe, 44, is a 22-year veteran of the crime lab. For the past 10 years he has worked in the lab's trace evidence section, where he's often peering into microscopes to compare or identify hairs or tiny bits of fibers, glass, paint, soil or wood — any of which might place a person at a crime scene.

        He also handles arson cases, explosive analysis, gunshot residue, headlamp examinations, and cases involving shoe prints and tire tracks.

        Because the lab is part of the coroner's office, Mr. Trimpe says many people assume he works with human remains. That happens only occasionally. And unlike the CSI crime solvers, he often doesn't know many details of a case.

        “And I kind of like it that way. You're certainly going to be less biased, the less you know about the case.” It's why he avoids reading crime stories in the newspaper.

        “Whether I find something that helps the police or something that doesn't help the police doesn't matter to me,” says Mr. Trimpe. “All forensic scientists are and should be that way — unbiased. What we want is the truth.”

        Uncovering it can be tedious.

        Consider, for example, a human hair. Each time Mr. Trimpe analyzes one under a microscope, he makes detailed notes, such as: Is the shaft straight, wavy or curly? Is the diameter thin or wide, constant or variable? Is the cross-section flat, oval or round? Is the tip cut, rounded or split? He considers pigment density and distribution. He also looks at features in the inner part of the hair.

        When 47-year-old Caroline Jones was stabbed to death in Westwood in October 1994, the killer left behind a bloody baseball cap. And in it, some hair.

        Police interviewed several suspects. But when Mr. Trimpe compared samples of their hair to the ball cap hair, they didn't match.

        But that, too, was satisfying, he says, noting he “would rather set an innocent person free than put a guilty person behind bars.”

        Almost a year and a half later, police arrested Ms. Jones' son-in-law, Jonathan A. Hirsch, who had bragged about the crime to two others. Mr. Trimpe examined samples of Mr. Hirsch's hair, which matched perfectly the hair from the ball cap. In 1997, Mr. Hirsch was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 20 years.

        Mr. Trimpe, who has a bachelor's degree in forensic science from Eastern Kentucky University, says he enjoys his job. But he won't single out work of which he's particularly proud.

        “I don't look at cases like that. And I don't call prosecutors to find out if they won.”

        Says Mr. Dean, the lab director: “(Forensic scientists) don't have time to get emotionally involved in a case. You are under constant pressure to crank it out, to meet the demands of ... court trial dates, investigators bugging you, prosecutors bugging you.”

        Outwardly, at least, Mr. Trimpe doesn't appear to let anything bug him. He's polite and soft-spoken as he describes working with trace evidence from burglaries, assaults, shootings, arsons and the like.

        A hit-and-run case from a few years ago was typical. Someone had been struck by a car and left to die. Police nabbed a suspect and vehicle. Mr. Trimpe's task: determine whether any paint from the car — blue metallic, with a yellow primer — was on the victim's clothing.

        In the brightly lit trace evidence room, Mr. Trimpe scraped the clothing using a metal spatula. Small particles fell onto a white sheet of paper on a large white table. He collected the debris and placed it under a microscope.

        He found flakes of blue metallic paint with a layer of yellow primer. Then he analyzed its chemical makeup using high-tech equipment. The car paint, he concluded, was indeed the same as that found on the victim's clothing.

        Mr. Trimpe worked alone in the trace evidence lab until March, when he was joined by Tracey Rauch, who came from the drug lab.

        “Drugs get pretty repetitive,” she says. “It's cocaine, cocaine, cocaine. Trace is different every day. I like the puzzle part of it.”

        That's what first piqued Mr. Trimpe's interest. He was about 11 years old when his brother's Volkswagen Beetle, parked in front of their home in Western Hills, was badly damaged in a hit-and-run. Police were called.

        “Before they came, I found pieces of a yellow parking brake light laying in the street,” Mr. Trimpe says. “My brother's car didn't have yellow lights.”

        He showed the evidence to an unimpressed police officer, who threw the pieces on the ground and drove over them as he left.

        “Something bugged me about that,” Mr. Trimpe says.

        He didn't immediately decide on a career in forensic science. In fact, his dream was to be a priest. But that plan changed in high school when he met the woman who would be his wife. Mike and Joanne Trimpe have been married 22 years, and have three boys.

        Maybe when he retires from the crime lab, Mr. Trimpe says, he'll become a Roman Catholic deacon. He likes the idea of teaching forensic science and religion at his alma mater, Elder High School, where he is the golf coach.

        But that's years away. In the meantime, cases keep coming. Since the April 2001 riots — and the increase in violence that followed — Mr. Trimpe has been particularly busy analyzing gunshot residue.

        When a gun is fired, microscopic particles fall like tiny raindrops in the immediate area. Police use an adhesive to lift those particles off a suspected shooter's hand, and send the sample to Mr. Trimpe.

        He uses a scanning electron microscope to magnify the sample 300 times. An energy dispersive x-ray spectrometer identifies the chemicals — lead, barium and antimony — that indicate gunshot residue. The procedure is like looking for a pea in an area the size of two football fields, and the cost of the equipment isn't cheap: $250,000.

        Although his work often revolves around microscopic specks of evidence, Mr. Trimpe knows how to think big.

        This summer, he and his brother plan to climb Mount Adams in south-central Washington state. At 12,276 feet, it is one of the largest volcanoes in the Cascade Range.

        “Of course, as I'm walking along I'll be picking up little things and looking at them,” he says.

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